There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity… It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
REALLY!
~Thanks to Eruesso for pointing me to this great video.
~ continued from Part 1
~There are lots more…..but you get the idea.
You know sometimes I write things and have no idea "from whence" they come. Doesn’t happen often, but it did today. Who am I kidding? I know it comes from Source. But I guess I’m STILL always surprised when it happens. My friend Ernie, at LRC Houston, wrote a post about thankfulness. My response to it "just flowed". I love it when it "just flows", it rarely does! So, I wanted to share it with you for what it’s worth.
"For some time now (as my website proclaims) I have been praying prayers of thanksgiving ONLY each morning as I drive to work. Thankfulness leaves me in a better frame of mind (the mind beyond OUR mind). It has accomplished for me what years and years and years of begging, pleading, beseeching never did. Thank God, our Source for what is already done or is “in the process on manifesting itself”. Focused intention of one mind with Source, co-creates our reality. Thankfulness yields a contented spirit."
Be a thankful spirit!
Every once in a while, I stop and take a look at where I stand in this journey I am on. At present, my head is spinning when I see how far I have come in the last year. I make the assessment of my journey by reading posts from the past. So what have I noticed about the last year’s posts?
First, I find that the deeper I go into research and study of traditional Christianity, the greater variety of belief I find throughout. It has been, truly, an education in the history of Christian beliefs and a truer picture of what it meant to be Christian at the genesis.
Second, I have been shocked by the in-depth introduction to the God of the Old Testament; the God of wrath. I can truly see how the Gnostics, especially Marcion, came to see the God of the OT as a completely different God as compared with the God of the NT. It is easy to see why those outside Christianity see it as polytheistic.
Third, my studies have revealed to me the historical sequence of the creation of the OT. This helps to explain in much greater detail where the books of the OT came from, their actual correct chronological order, and the effect the chronological order has on the picture that most traditional Christians have of God and his purpose. In connection with that idea, I have come to see how the gospels were created and the purpose each author (or authors) had in mind for the projected audience of each, and how each gospel reflects back to the OT.
Next, my own vision of the man called Jesus has changed in the past year. I think I have a more realistic picture of his actual purpose, his ministry if you will, while on earth. It is not the purpose that Christianity puts in our minds. He never intended to create a new religion. In fact, he spok against that very thing. He was all about relationship. He was such a unique individual. Jesus, for me embodies the kind of relationship with the unnameable which I seek. None other with which I am familiar, has ever approached closeness, clarity of what I call the Christos. His life, his relationship, his understanding of what it is to be human is what I seek. I like this new vision of Jesus much better. I see him as one of us, part of us. We may not have a true record of all he spoke or taught, but the things that are recorded in the NT as his words carry the overall picture of LOVE, compassion, and concern for those around him. The quote about love speaks volumes for me. "Love God, and love your fellow human beings". This truly IS the greatest commandment and covers it all.
As I continue to look back, I find a disturbing picture of Christianity emerging from what I have learned. It is something I strongly suspected and tried without success to put from my mind. Christianity is so very EXCLUSIVE, not INCLUSIVE. How can we bring peace to the earth, to humanity if we are exclusive. We must not exclude anyone. To believe that our way is the only way and if it’s not your way, too bad for you…is an unloving approach to life. Dogmatic Christianity is not LOVE. It is not what Jesus taught in any way.
Overall, my journey continues now with a renewed vigor and determination to further explore my connection with Source and to seek a realistic picture of the man called Jesus and his mission here. I will go where I am led, not afraid of what I will find; not afraid I will go "too far". I believe we are curious creatures who seek the unknown, who want to know, and desire a connection with something greater than ourselves.
The gospels of the New Testament are attempts by their authors to explain the powerful God experience that the faith communities, for which they wrote, had had with the man called Jesus. The problem is, one cannot WRITE an EXPERIENCE. One can only try to attempt to explain an experience. As a result, we have four quite different accounts of what it meant to meet God in the life of the man Jesus, depending on for whom or to whom each gospel author was writing. The gospel stories, centered as they were on the life of Jesus, have become, for some, a part of the Jewish epic story. That the gospels are a part of the Jewish epic story is not easy for the readers and interpreters throughout Christian history to see. That is primarily because the gospels are seen as either biography or as literal history instead of being part of a Jewish epic story. I think it is easier to see the Old Testament as the epic story of the Jews than to see the NT as a part of that epic. The addition of the Jesus story makes, for some, the Jewish epic a human story, with the potential of making it a universal story. Many readers and interpreters of the gospels came to assume that the gospels had to be true biography or accurate history. But, as we know, no epic is ever that.
Let’s look at the gospels for a minute.
Mark, writing in the early 70’s CE, faced the question of how God could be experienced in the life of Jesus. His explanation came in the story of the baptism of Jesus. God declared Jesus to be the Son of God by the action of the Spirit, which incidentally was in agreement with Paul (written some 20 years earlier). The difference was timing and graphic illustration. Mark told the story that Jesus was made "Son of God" at his baptism, not at the time of the resurrection, as Paul suggested.
Matthew, writing in the early to mid 80’s CE, tells a different story to answer the same question which Mark asked, changing the timing and description of the experience. For Matthew’s story, an unnamed angel of God revealed Jesus as the "Son of God" to Joseph in a dream. The action was still that of the Spirit, which was said to have caused Mary to conceive. This is where the story of the "Virgin Birth" was born.
Luke, writing in the late 80’s or perhaps early 90’s CE, repeated the miraculous birth story, but made it more specific and changed the details. The unnamed angel becomes Gabriel who communicates not with Joseph, but with Mary herself, in a vision.
The gospel of John, written in the late 90’s or perhaps into the next century, decides on something completely different. The author (or authors) decide that there was never a time when God was not in Christ. He told the story of Jesus, as the enfleshment of the eternal Word that had been spoken into existence at the beginning of creation. This became the place where the preexistence of Jesus, so essential to later doctrines of incarnation, the atonement, and the complex idea of the Trinity, first entered the Christian story.
Perhaps we need here to mention Paul, who suggested that God entered Jesus in the resurrection when God raised him into God’s life. When compared to John’s suggestion that Jesus was the enfleshed Word of God and part of who God is since creation, I think anyone can see that the range of time and descriptions used here cover quite a range of human explanations. Many parts of the various accounts seem to contradict each other.
Paul and John and the others in the NT were attempting , each in his own way, to make sense out of an experience that proclaimed , in ecstatic language, "We have met God in this life of Jesus". They then, in the rest of each gospel, proceed to expand the life of Jesus to epic proportions with the heroic deeds and miracles attributed to him.
It is impossible to WRITE an EXPERIENCE. The best these gospel writers could do was attempt to explain that experience. Their explanations along with that of Paul are pretty much the sum total of our NT idea of who Jesus was and how his life was in God.
*information taken from the works of John S. Spong
“Birth after birth I walk the Earth
always my goal is the same.
Yearning for learning, looking, unhooking,
attempting to master the game.
Walking and talking, at times even stalking,
the Truth that I know is here.
Then struggling to dance, ever flirting with chance,
knowing much on life’s path is a dare.
Again I come to the ridge that has no bridge,
to the place God’s calling me to be.
Yet my body still falters at Nature’s altar,
though indeed the Christ set us free.
Yes, I’ve been here before on this very shore,
trying to manifest the freedom espied,
But NOW there is peace, soul powers released,
so I don’t take that last step…. I FLY!”
America is a country familiar with and accepting of transient lifestyles. It isn’t at all uncommon for our children to grow up and ‘move away.’ Many of us have moved so often in our careers that it’s almost expected that our kids will do the same. However, for a Palestinian family living in Israel, this is rarely the case. Not only do the children remain at home, often after marriage they build their house on top of their parent’s home. When you’re ‘land-locked’ , and Israel forbids you from moving, you build up, not beside or across town.
Here’s an interesting statistic: 50% of all suicide bombers in the lands held or occupied by Israel are victims of having had their home destroyed! What is it that caused their homes to be destroyed? A program instituted by Israel.
And this is why the home demolition program carried out by the Israelis is so devastating. It is not just the loss of property that Palestinians experience, but the loss of identity. In a document from Amnesty International we are told that “The largest single wave of destruction carried out by the Israeli army was in Jenin refugee camp in April 2002” when more than 800 families – equaling over 4,000 people – were driven from their homes.
The practice of ‘communal’ punishment, something prohibited by international law, is when a person involved in civil disobedience not only is punished by the destruction of their home, but also the homes of those related to this individual are destroyed as well. Imagine having your home destroyed merely because one of your children (or even a distant relative) was ‘accused’ of having committed a crime – not convicted, mind you, just accused. Not only that, but in addition to your home, several homes of other family members were destroyed. Do you think that would compel you to action, to retribution, to an act of terrorism?
Imagine a bulldozer arriving at your home, unannounced, and begins leveling it. The time it takes to bring a home to rubble can be as few as five minutes. For an apartment complex of five homes, it takes only a few hours to bring it to the ground.
As well, the net result of such demolitions is that more and more the Palestinians are ‘herded’ onto smaller islands of communal living if not driven out of the country altogether. It is clear that by taking the land, Israel not only displaces the people on it but also forever ends their right to self-determination.
Once a home is destroyed, a permit to rebuild must be applied for. The cost for such a permit is prohibitive, let alone the fact that denial is assured. In an instant and without proof of any wrongdoing, an Israeli bulldozer can arrive at your home and in minutes you can witness your entire world crumbling down.
The net result is that Israel gains effective control over the country by confining the 3.6 million Palestinians of the Occupied Territories to small enclaves comprising just 8% of the country; enclaves that are often encircled by a massive concrete wall.
In the name of peace, we ask all Jewish citizens to petition the Israeli government to cease their systematic home demolition program. And we ask all American citizens reading this blog to petition their U.S. congressmen and Senators to address the illegal and immoral problem so that peace might be one step closer to arriving for all the citizens of Palestine/Israel.
~Borrowed this from : http://www.nakedpastor.com/
Pretty self-explanatory!
*You may have to use your "ZOOM" feature in the lower right of your screen. Sorry, had to make it fit my template!
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